The phone will first land in Asia in January (likely looking to capitalize on the lucrative Chinese market). Priced at approximately $249 USD, the phone will then jump to Europe and the Middle East. When and if the phone does land in the U.S., it would likely only interest the most budget-minded of customers, given that the flagship Lumia 920 is offered for $99 USD and the mid-range Lumia 820 is offered for $49 USD. The Lumia 620 will likely be offered for free with contract.

The phone packs a 3.8-inch 800x480 pixel screen (up slightly from last generation) and a 1 GHz dual core Snapdragon S4 processor from Qualcomm, Inc. (QCOM). While the RAM is doubled to 512 MB, the relatively small allotment may prove a little slow when using certain apps. Storage is provided by 8 GB of internal NAND and a microSD expansion slot. An additional 7 GB of space is offered on Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) SkyDrive service.

Following Nokia's scheme of colorful packaging, the phone will be made available in lime green, orange, magenta, yellow, cyan, white and black body colors.

Typical perks like NFC and wireless charging are onboard. Nokia also will ship the devices with its Nokia Music and Nokia City Lens (an augmented reality mapping service for urban areas, which points out local landmarks).

Nokia also brags about its SmartShot lens upgrade, which allows for panoramic shots (sort of like Apple, Inc.'s (AAPL) iPhone 5) and Cinemagraph, an image post-processing tool that allows you to animate still photographs. The low-end phone carries a 5 megapixel camera lens, with LED flash, plus a front-facing VGA camera for video chats.

It's still a nice upgrade compared to any WP7 phone, which were still sold earlier this year, and at this or higher prices. $250 out of contract isn't bad, it is only now with the Nexus 4 that our judgement is seriously distorted. It's welcomed of course, so I do agree they can work on the price. I wish they'd make $150 out of contract phones. Which I think is reasonable with this hardware, considering you can get an N4 for $300.

The $250 is an MSRP approximation for Asia, and even if it is 250 MSRP in North America it will almost surely sell for less because of specials or just street price.

I've got to say, it is a midly interesting phone for someone looking to get into smartphones, isn't already tied to an ecosystem, and isn't interested in a contract. The screen resolution is mediocre but it is a smaller screen too. It has an SD slot which people with large media collections and/or data caps which limit streaming like to have. no LTE (at least in the versions released) is the most notable missing feature. I am actually mildly curious myself if it's a pentaband GSM world phone.